Wind-up chair charges your cellphone

PEGA Design & Engineering unveils a new chair that doubles as a cellphone charger at the Milan Furniture Fair.

Cellphone battery life has greatly improved over the years, but it seems that no matter how many hours of talk time a phone has, people still need to charge their phones when they're out and about. Although you can find centralized charging stations in airports and other locations where plenty of people congregate, Taiwan-based PEGA Design & Engineering (D&E) is putting a more fashionable spin on mobile charging with its WindUp chair.

“With WindUp, you can always have your smartphones charged, as long as you don’t mind to do some clockwork. Use the image of clockwork to ask people to contribute physical efforts for their smart devices’ power.” Source: PEGA D&E

Simply wind up the chair using the bright red handle and as the mechanism unwinds, it charges your phone. This may not be the most efficient cellphone charger out there but it gets my vote for most unique.

PEGA D&E is displaying the cellphone-charging chair and other products at the 2013 Milan Furniture Fair. In addition to the WindUp, the design firm is also showcasing the Good Night, a bedside table that uses a cellphone to control a built-in light source.

Another item on display at the PEGA D&E booth is the Happy Together, which encourages people to put down their cellphones and have some good old-fashioned face-to-face fun. “To play, you need to put down the smartphone and interact with others so that you can create interesting sounds and music. More people to play, richer music comes out.”

I love the fact that both the WindUp and the Happy Together have a retro look, especially the turntable design of the Happy Together. Cellphones are marvels of modern technology and so the contrast of the decades-old design of the two products makes for a great presentation.

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